White roses

click photo to enlarge
I was raised in the white rose county of Yorkshire but, because I was born in Westmorland, I've never considered myself a true Yorkshireman. Our boys are Yorkshire-born, as my wife, but I still see myself as a son of Westmorland, an ancient county that in 1974 was carelessly and unthinkingly parcelled up with Cumberland and part of Lancashire into the newly formed county of Cumbria. However, when I was growing up I seem to have absorbed some of the characteristics of Yorkshire being both stubborn and argumentative, proud of the area in which I lived and showing a certain disdain for the neighbouring red rose county of Lancashire.

The Wars of the Roses on which the Yorkshire/Lancashire rivalry is based was something that was impressed on us children, and I was fascinated by the way that, after much bloodshed, the two roses symbolic of the two counties were combined to form the Tudor rose. That union did not, however, end the rivalry between the counties. For example, during every childhood summer I took note of the outcome of the regular cricket matches between Yorkshire and Lancashire, always rooting for my adoptive county. But then, after thirty odd years living in Yorkshire I lived for twenty years in Lancashire. That put an end to any vestigial disdain for Lancastrians because in living among them I found them to be friendly people with an equally fine and interesting county of which they are justifiably proud.

I was thinking about my childhood affection for the white rose the other day when, with a visiting friend, we went to a few of the local church flower festivals. One particular display featured a variety of white flowers against a black background and I selected part of it for this shot of a group of white roses. The lighting in the church was such that it only needed a bit of underexposure and some "burning" during the post processing for me to make the blooms "float" against the black card the arrangers had used to show off the flowers.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Sony RX100
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 10.4mm (28mm - 35mm equiv.)
F No: f6.3
Shutter Speed: 1/30
ISO: 640
Exposure Compensation:  -0.7 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

The resurgence of black and white

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It's surely true that the avalanche of colour photography that has swept over us for several decades has made us more receptive to the charms of black and white. A new, French film - "The Artist" - is currently getting rave reviews. Not only is it silent, it's also shot in black and white. Would most people have given it the time of day thirty, forty, fifty years ago? Today it's not unusual to see advertising in newspapers, magazines and on TV, often for higher priced goods and services, that features black and white. Is colour's slip from almost total dominance a case of familiarity breeding contempt? Probably not. I think it's more that the distance between the era of predominantly black and white photography (and film) is now sufficiently great that we can once more appreciate its qualities.

What are those qualities? What makes photographing in black and white (or converting a colour image) a positive step rather than a regression into times past? It has been said that the act of the photographer translating colour into black and white in the mind's eye, of itself, makes the older medium one that is more creative. But there's much more to it than that. Structure, tone and texture are stronger in black and white: colour weakens these qualities. Black and white photography has been described as paraphrasing and formalising to a much greater extent than colour, and that undoubted truth is, for me, at the heart of what makes it attractive. Then there's the fact that black and white often dispenses with the decorative allurement and prettiness that colour frequently confers.

Today's photograph illustrates that last point. The rose that I photographed was pink. In its original form the image is mainly about that deep, showy colour. There's nothing wrong with that; such photographs have their place. But, when converted to black and white, the in-your-face nature of the shot changes dramatically. It becomes more subtle, the accent shifts to the understated shades of grey, to the structure of the bloom. The photograph is now much more of a suggestion than a statement. That kind of transformation is only one of the possible directions in which an image travels when converted to black and white. Sometimes it becomes much more dramatic, other shots acquire a graphic quality, etc. And yes, I think these are qualities that a wider audience is once more coming to appreciate.

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 100mm macro
F No: f8
Shutter Speed: 1.3 sec
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation:  -0.33 EV
Image Stabilisation: Off

Cool pink rose

click photo to enlarge
Yesterday I went with a group from the local garden club to view a selection of church flower festivals. As well as seeing some fine arrangements of flowers based on themes, and having the opportunity to look around churches that are usually closed, this is also a chance to grab a few close-up shots of flowers. The LX3 is a good camera for this. The dark interiors of churches need its bright f2 lens, the image stabilisation allows hand-holding and renders the tripod redundant, and the excellent macro facility makes securing the images relatively easy.

I took quite a few shots, some of which will be used on the garden club's blog, and a couple that I'll feature here. The churches usually display their flowers for a week, and our visit was a little later than in the past two years. Consequently some of the blooms were starting to wilt. Coming upon a display of dusky pink roses I noticed that they'd been misted with water in an attempt to prolong their radiance, so I took the opportunity to feature the water droplets that were glinting in the light from a stained glass window. The cold light from the shadows gave the rose a cool tint that quite appealed to me. This isn't a fresh, bright, joyous "first rose of summer": the coolness gives it a melancholy feel, but it's a touch that I quite like.

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Lumix LX3
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 5.1mm (24mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f2
Shutter Speed: 1/80
ISO: 160
Exposure Compensation: -0.66 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Chintzy

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"Automatically adjusts the image using Auto Color, Auto Contrast and Auto Levels." That's what a piece of software I sometimes use says the "Auto Adjust" control does; and it's really unpredictable. Sometimes it works on the unprocessed image to give it a touch more "snap", other times it takes the camera's flat-looking output and renders it to look much more like what the eye saw. But then there are times when it goes all psychedelic on you - as it did with this shot of the pink rose that I presented in black and white the other day.

What Auto Adjust appears to have done in this instance is to take what the human eye sees as a monotone flower, measure the slight differences in colour where the sky, leaves and nearby flowers have subtley changed the hue, and then emphasise those areas whilst increasing the contrast. When I saw its output I thought it would look good as a chintz, or perhaps as a composite image with the flower repeated after being rotated through 90 degrees. I've tried this sort of thing before here and here, so I decided to give it another go! It's not everyone's idea of what photography is about, but it pleases me to try this stuff now and then.

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 35mm macro (70mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f9
Shutter Speed: 1/200
ISO: 200
Exposure Compensation: -0.3 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Who visits PhotoReflect?

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At the very bottom of this page is a hit counter icon/link from Site Meter. By using a piece of their code in the Blogger template I can gather a few useful statistics about the hits I get. As well as the number of visitors, how many pages they view, how long they spend here, which country they're from and so on, it also tells me some basic information about their computer - screen resolution, OS, browser, colour depth and other bits and pieces. Lest anyone should see this as Big Brotherish, let me emphasise that NONE of this is personal information, just generic stuff that's useful in terms of deciding how to present web pages to potential viewers and readers.

About half of the people I get each day are returning visitors who usually click a browser bookmark of the blog address or come through, for example, Google Reader, or the Atom feed, though now and again I get a flurry from an email link. The other half arrive here through either a text or an image search. One of the other useful pieces of information that the hit counter offers is details of the search that a person makes - the search engine and search terms are listed. If that's news to anyone, or if some people find it a bit scary, get used to it: all this information has always been available from internet users. However, only your ISP, or perhaps some shadowy government agency with your ISP's connivance, can track that information back to you.

But, that's not the main point of today's "reflection" which is to comment on how surprising it can be to discover which blog images and articles attract the most search engine hits. In recent weeks, topping the text searches has been Why black and white photography? and The corrugated chair, whilst Beautiful feathers and A Victorian Garden have been the most popular image searches. Why those? Well it's my guess that they perhaps deal with subjects that are less widely covered on the web, so come nearer the top of a search. But, I can't acount for my all-time winner in terms of searches, both text and image - Blue glass, with clouds. What is it about that post that regularly brings visitors to PhotoReflect? I'm at a loss to answer my own question.

One thing I can say with a fair degree of certainty is that today's black and white rendering of a pink rose, a conversion I did for the lovely soft grey tones that it produced, will generate few search-based hits!

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 35mm macro (70mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f9
Shutter Speed: 1/200
ISO: 200
Exposure Compensation: -0.3 EV
Image Stabilisation: On